Frugal Friday with Marsha 5/16/14

This week has been spending a lot of time in the garage attempting to prepare for a garage sale that starts tonight then goes tomorrow.
A task that I should have been working on for a month!
I have had 2 aunts die in the last year and we put my mother-in-law into a home. This means that I brought stuff home from both my Aunt Donna's and my Aunt Thersea's and hubby has busily been bringing stuff home from his mom's house since her house is now sold.
What a mess!!

I really feel the need to put an ad in the newspaper to advertise our sale. I don't feel the need to pay the $26.25 that they want to only say Multi-family garage sale, our address and the day and time! That is highway robbery, as my mom says.
We don't have high ticket items to sell and usually I would be lucky to make $20 at a sale, if even that!

I've put the ad on craigslist. I've posted it to my status in facebook as well as to the local garage sale group. We also have a local buy, sell and trade facebook group. They co-own a website called BST Exchange. I've put the ad on the exchange and then posted the ad to that group too.
My mom is calling in to the local radio talk show this morning to advertise.
We then have a few signs made up to hang on some corners. Will it be enough? I can only hope and pray that it will.

Garage sales are so much work for such little turn over, at least for us they are.
I need to look through what is left of my couponing stash....I know I have some toothpaste and shave gel in excess and that generally will sell.


Last week I bought groceries at Walmart and spent $40 ($39.19 to be exact) on what seems like so little.
I bought:
16 lb bag of cat food
bagels
whipped cream cheese
8 pack of frozen burritos
sour cream
bag of salad
taco sauce
2 cup bag of shredded cheese
Carnation Instant Breakfast
.98 box of mini chewy sweetarts
gallon of milk

I've found myself wishing I had shopped at Aldi instead. In fact, when I get $40 again to spend I'm going to go to Aldi and experiment.
I know I can't get the sweetarts, but I can find some other sort of candy. They also don't sell my breakfast drink so I will have to know to take off $5 for that. I will be sure to post my results once I do.

Groceries are horribly priced these days! I'm working towards catching up with cutting and sorting my coupons once again. It's a must that I start paying attention to what is on sale and price matching and matching coupons as well. $40 a week for groceries is about my limit on what I can spend. As you can see from my list that $40 only really covered 1 meal and breakfasts, plus feeding the cats.
I could only do that last week because of the meats I got on markdown the week before.
It all works out in the end, but I'm missing my bargain coupon shopping.

How has your frugal week been?

An InLinkz Link-up

Squidoo Hopping 5/15/14

Shouldn't it be squidoo payday today?  Maybe that just comes later in the day.   I don't expect much, but I did have a couple of sales recently.

This past week I read a post on bubblews by another lensmaster.  She wrote that another lensmaster had been prompting her to update her profile.  Mostly to add in a link to her bubblews profile.
This motivated me to get in to squidoo and update my own profile.

I changed it up just a bit and then did add a link to my bubblews profile page. (although I sure with bubblews would be up more than it's down).
While there I also switched up the 5 lenses of mine that you see down the side as well as add my google+ link and changed a couple of those other website links too.

This week, if you don't mind, let's do something different in the linky.  For one of the links that you share, please make it your profile page.  I'm interested in what others have for their profiles.

When I'm returning comments, I also open the person's profile page in another tab before approving the comment.

Thanks gang!

An InLinkz Link-up

WIP Wednesday 5/14/13

Life is so crazy right now!  My daughter took on a full time babysitting job.  This on top of finishing up her schoolwork to be graduated this year.
We've had one yard sale and really must have another one this Saturday.
Always the usual things that I do, but add in the extra taking Jasmine to the babysitting jobs and picking up grandkids at school.
It's surprising that I've gotten anything done and home and I have to be thankful for my times away from home to sew.

Friday was sit n' sew at the quilt shop.   It's from 6-10 pm.   I took my hexagons.
I learned my lesson that you don't work on them that long in a stretch.  I thought my thumb and my thumbnail were both going to fall off from holding down to get them stitched.
I didn't get any pieces put together, but I have 4 sets of flowers ready to put together.  They are in the bag.
Otherwise you can just look at my box and know this truly is a forever project.

Here are all of my 4 patches that will eventually be 16 patch squares for the Goodnight Irene quilt.
I'm to the point of squaring these up.   I still hope to get the 2 rows of blocks together and sewn on to catch up to what I should have done by this month.

A couple of evenings in front of the tv and computer I cut up 4 extra large t-shirts and got the middle braid started on a rug to make with them.  I'm thinking the 4 extra large shirts will make a rug all their own.   I still have another rug started in another bag as well that didn't get worked on.
I did pick up some more fabric strips to add to that bag yesterday.
Oh, that cute sewing/craft basket I picked up at a yard sale for $5.  I really bought it for the $8 cone of cotton yarn that was inside it.  I decided that cute basket is a lot better than the usual bag I have sitting by my desk while I work....decorative too.
It was also filled with other yarn and knitting supplies.  I won't use those so they are packed into a bag to put out for sale at the yard sale.

Yesterday was sewing club day at church.  After months and months of working on this quilt, I am finally to hand sewing the binding down.

Finally we are down to my current lists.  Hopefully I can check off a couple more by next Wednesday.  This is only sewing and not my rug making or other crochet and such projects.

UFO's:
(finished) Log Cabin quilt
Log Cabin wall hanging
Log cabin table runner
Rectangle quilt
2 rectangle table runners (one done)
challenge wall hanging
GoodNight Irene quilt/wall hanging
Quilt for sewing club at church
 (Finished) Applique Bunnies quilt
 (Finished) Penny Patch Quilt
Yo-Yo Table runner
Hexagon table topper
(Finished) Spoolin' Around
Emerald Island Fusique table runner

NewFO's
Sunflower table runner and matching placemats
Spiderweb quilt
Easter wall hanging
Cat wall hanging
Christmas bags (total of at least 25)
Braid table runner
Sunflower pillow
Christmas wall hanging
Five and Dime quilt
Chevron quilt

I am linking up with the following blogs: